With the world becoming a more and more difficult place to light up in, the owners of shops that sell premium cigars have converged on New Orleans with the same concerns as cigarette makers—higher taxes and anti-smoking laws.
The cigars at the annual trade show of the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association are not the packaged stogies found in an isolated corner of a convenience store. These are the hand-rolled smokes—sometimes with Cuban seed tobacco grown in a non-embargoed country—that can go from a couple of bucks to $30 each.
As for the convention itself, which is hosting about 4,000 people through Wednesday, smoking will be allowed in the exhibit hall between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
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